NBC Executives: Hey, We May Be In Last Place, But At Least We're Not a "Shoot 'Em Up" Network

Within an hour after both executives spoke, NBC showed reporters at a news conference highlights of its show "Revolution" that included a swordfight, a standoff between two men with guns, a bloodied man, a building blown up with a flying body and a gunfight.

Later clips of the upcoming series "Deception" featured several shots of a bloodied, dead body.

NBC also is developing a drama, "Hannibal," based on one of fiction's most indelible serial killers, Hannibal Lecter. An airtime for the show hasn't been scheduled, but it could come this spring or summer.

NBC has got some nerve. For years, it positioned itself as the Liberal Network, pushing a lot of shows that annoyed heartland viewers; now it brags that at least they're not showing violence.

Well, some. Because it needs ratings, and it can't just keep pumping out shows that only thin slices of the population watch.

NBC may in fact be angling for a little government/lobbing group assistance -- highly rated shows which were deemed "too violent" have gotten cancelled for that reason, when the public has been roused into another senseless moral panic.

(Wild Wild West "too violent"? Because of some fistfights? How far we've come, or how far we've regressed, depending on your point of view.)

Maybe they're hoping to stir some controversy for CBS, and get some pressure so that CBS will "tone down" some of its shows and thereby weaken them.